Notes

People will look back on this era in our history to see what was known about Donald Trump while Americans were deciding whether to choose him as president. Here’s a running chronicle from James Fallows on the evidence available to voters as they make their choice, and of how Trump has broken the norms that applied to previous major-party candidates. (For a Fallows-led, ongoing reader discussion on Trump’s rise to the presidency, see “Trump Nation.”)

Jimmy Fallon "charmingly" mussing Donald Trump's hair. This will merely be amusing if Trump loses on November 8. It will be something worse if he wins. (NBC / Reuters)

Mainly because he’s talented, partly because of the similarity of our names, I’ve paid attention to Jimmy Fallon from the start.

Effective 53 days from now, he may have a lot to answer for. Performances like the one he put on this evening with Donald Trump, including a “charming” mussing of the candidate’s famous hair, are a crucial part of the “normalizing” process of a candidate who is outside all historical norms for this office.

In my current cover story I wrote:

Trump’s rise through the primary debates, and his celebrations of successive victories at rallies in between, made it appear that one of his gifts was the ability to combine unvarying emphases and messages with a wide range of dramatic styles. One day he was egging on huge crowds by picking out scattered protesters and yelling, “Get ’em outta here!” The next day he was talking earnestly with sympathetic hosts on Fox News or conservative talk-radio shows—and then in the evening chatting urbanely, in a “we’re all New Yorkers here” style that was a less risqué version of his old radio exchanges with Howard Stern, to win over presumptively less sympathetic figures such as Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel on their shows.

Last November, Trump served as host (and danced in a parody rap video) on Saturday Night Live. In February, just after the New Hampshire primary, Stephen Colbert allowed Trump to phone in to his Late Show—and Colbert, for once overmatched, ended up making Trump seem as if he was in on all the jokes rather than the object of them.

One reason for Trump’s rise has been the effective merger of the entertainment and political-campaign industries. Jimmy Fallon accelerated that process tonight. He did so on the same day in which Trump put out a crazy economic plan and still refused to say that the incumbent (black) president was a “real” American.

Fallon’s humoring of Trump was a bad move, a destructive and self-indulgent mistake, which I hope Fallon becomes embarrassed about but the rest of us don’t have long-term reason to rue.

Donald Trump Jr., at right, with his brother Barron and stepmother Melania at the Republican convention. Today he weighs in about taxes.Carlo Allegri / Reuters

This one is just a note for the record. Please recall the sequence:

Four years ago, Donald Trump said that Mitt Romney should release his tax returns. That’s hardly a surprising position: Every major-party nominee since Richard Nixon has been expected to do so, and has.

Through the past year, Trump has said repeatedly that he’d be happy to release his tax returns but can’t because they are “under audit.”

That excuse is bullshit. No lesser authority than the IRS has said so repeatedly and unmistakably. Whether or not the returns are actually being audited (as discussed here), there is no legal reason whatsoever to keep Trump from releasing them.

While Trump has stuck with his utter-bullshit rationalization, and while establishment Republicans from Paul Ryan on down have averted their eyes, reasons have mounted up to think that a disclosure expected of all previous nominees is especially important for him. These include: the shady operations of his Trump Foundation; the unsubstantiated nature of most of his claimed donations; and, significantly for a president, the extent of his reliance on foreign creditors and customers.

Even without any of these complications, tax returns are part of the “transparency” expected of a potential president. Michael Dukakis had no complicated wealth to speak of, nor Joe Biden or Barack Obama as nominees, but still all of them had to turn over the records. Donald Trump’s finances are more complex than those of any prior nominee and thus of greater potential public significance. But he has stonewalled, and his enablers in the party have allowed him to get away with it.

Finally today two campaign representatives shifted the rationale, as if the previous one had not existed, to one that is more completely indefensible.

First Donald Trump Jr., then campaign ally Jack Kingston said that that Trump Sr. couldn’t release the returns because people might find things in them. As Trump Jr., who tends to make his father’s points with less finesse, said in an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

When asked why his father has not released his tax returns as presidential candidates have traditionally done, Trump Jr. said, “Because he’s got a 12,000-page tax return that would create … financial auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that would distract from [his father’s] main message.”

Kingston, a former congressman who now works for one of D.C.’s biggest lobbying firms but is part of Trump’s “anti-insider” team, made a similar point today on CNN:

“If you put it on the table, you’re going to have 300 million Americans second-guessing what is this, what is that?”

Of course, asking what is that?, aka “second-guessing,” is why public officials have to make financial disclosures. It’s why both Kingston and Donald Trump Sr., and presumably Donald Trump Jr. as well, were hammering Hillary Clinton to release her emails. If all the information in medical records, financial reports, or official emails were flattering, no one would be required to release it. It’s only because it can lead to “second-guessing” that it’s expected of public officials.

***

I’m noting this in real time, at a moment when like so many other flaps it’s prominent on talk shows and news feeds. But like so many other “never before!” episodes in the Trump campaign, it’s likely soon to become “normalized,” and fade.

I note that with 53 days until the election, and with polls tightening, a nominee continues to defy a norm that his modern predecessors have all respected—and that his campaign has stepped away from his previous rationalized excuse and, out of nothing, invented a new alibi. And his party’s leaders say: That’s fine. People will look back on this time.

Pastor Faith Green Timmons speaking with the candidate yesterday in Flint. When he was no longer in the pastor's presence, Trump said that at the moment depicted here she was a "nervous mess."Evan Vucci / AP

We could be entering the Era of Hourly Time Capsules, in part because I need to make up for the past few days away from The Internet.

To note this for-the-moment highly publicized episode before it gets sandblasted from public memory by whatever is about to happen next: Yesterday, in Flint, Michigan, Donald Trump revealed a trait that is strikingly recurrent in his own behavior, and strikingly different from what I can recall from any other presidential nominee.

That trait is the combination of his bombast about women when they are not present, and his reluctance or inability to confront them face-to-face.

I don’t know of any other nominee in modern times of whom that was so clearly true. (Richard Nixon gave all the signs of not being physically courageous, but he rhetorically he did not show the stark contrast between being nasty-behind-their-back / polite-to-their-face that Trump does with women who challenge him.)

This is something I discuss in my current cover story, involving the three distinct moments in the primary season when Trump looked worst in live exchanges:

Donald Trump was made to look bad by one interviewer with the time, preparation, and guts to pursue a line of questioning, and by two women who discussed right in front of him the ugly things he has said.

If he shows up for this fall’s debates, he’ll encounter moderators with a lot of time to explore issues, and a woman with decades of onstage toughness behind her.

And it’s what you saw in this now-famous showdown in Flint, in which Trump meekly accepted correction in person from Pastor Faith Green Timmons, when she told him he was not supposed to be making a political speech—and then, once safely out of her gaze, flat-out lied about what had happened and had been captured on tape.

Here is what Trump told the never-disappointing Fox and Friends this morning:

“I noticed she was so nervous when she introduced me,” he said. “When she got up to introduce me she was so nervous, she was shaking. I said, wow, this is kind of strange. Then she came up. So she had that in mind, there’s no question.”

And here is what actually occurred:

***

Bonus travails-of-the-press point: NPR’s Scott Detrow did a very strong and pointed post contrasting the way Trump described the Flint episode and what actually occurred there.

But here is the way NPR headlined his post:

“Misstates Key Facts”? What, exactly, would be wrong with the word “lies”?

Remember the episode of “the Star,” reported back in installment #33? It was only two months ago, but it seems forever.

Remember this?

Way back in July, Donald Trump retweeted an item showing Hillary Clinton awash in a sea of cash, with the message “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” emblazoned on a six-sided star. Criticism quickly arose about the overlap with classic money-hungry anti-Semitic imagery, much as if Trump had used an image of blacks eating watermelon or Mexicans dozing under their sombreros. Fairly quickly Trump took the rare-for-him step of actually deleting his tweet. But even then his campaign’s reaction was outraged innocence. Anti-Semitic? What are you talking about?? Why would you think it’s a Star of David? It’s so obviously a sheriff’s badge! The real racists are the ones who think anything else!

That’s what this weekend’s “Pepe” episode reminds me of.

As a reminder: Hillary Clinton set the stage with her tin-eared comment about the “basket of deplorables.” Then the stylish and unembarrassable Trump ally Roger Stone responded with the Expendables-knock-off movie poster you see above, which Donald Trump Jr. then shared on Instagram, as shown below:

For some people, what I’m about to say is old news and obvious. But for many, perhaps most, it’s important to have the whole context laid out.

If you’ve spent any time in the thickets of “alt-right” activism in recent years, you know perfectly well who Pepe is and what he stands for. In the “Deplorables” poster he is of course the figure with green skin and Trump-style hair standing alongside The Man. But to people who would actually fit “the deplorables” standard of racial animus, Pepe is also the wink-wink insiders’ symbol not just of racism but even of outright exterminationism.

From a typical day’s email.

You can read an account of Pepe’s recent history via the Daily Beast a few months ago here. He also has a pre-racist internet meme history, which you can see here. I’m not going to share the Pepe variants I keep getting in the mail, but they include:

Pepe as a sly smiling gas-chamber operator, inviting Jews to take a “shower”; Pepe working the crematoria, after the gas chambers have done their job; Pepe at the glorious new southern Wall, grinning at the plight of Mexicans trapped on the other side; Pepe as an Orthodox Jew, smirking (because of the “inside job”) as the World Trade Centers come down 15 years ago; Pepe with a lynch mob.

Again, it’s old news, and that is the point. If you’re involved in politics, you know this. You know exactly what the image of Pepe signifies in political uses these days. So for the son and namesake of the Republican nominee to share with pride a poster including Pepe necessarily means either that he does not know about Pepe, which indicates incompetence—or that he does, which indicates something worse.

***

The episode should be more disturbing than the conceivably misunderstood six-sided star. In that case, an innocent if unlikely alternative explanation was at hand: No, really, it is just a sheriff’s star! What’s wrong with you, that you would think anything else?

But in this case, there is no “nice” version of contemporary political Pepe to fall back on. (Oh, you thought we meant the one from the death camps? Not at all! We meant the one from the lynchings! Sorry for the confusion.) With eight weeks to go until the election, this is what Donald Trump Jr. has been “honored” to send out.

An uncatchable-up-with amount of news has happened in the three days since installment #99. So I’ll start the regrouping process with something simple: a single incredible interview.

Early this morning, Donald Trump did a long phone-in session with CNBC, which you can see in full below. The questioners made Matt Lauer look like the Grand Inquisitor, as you will see if you take a look.

For instance, one of the early questions, from Joe Kernan, starts with the premise that businesses and business leaders are unfairly maligned in America today. What does a successful business leader like Trump think about that?

Through the rest of the interview, Trump reeled off several dozen surprising, unsubstantiated, completely wrong, and otherwise weird statements, none of which the interviewers challenged him on. Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star provided a convenient summary of a few:

And that’s just the start. Beyond the ones Dale mentions were Trump’s (fantastical) claim that “China could solve the problem with North Korea in one day, if they wanted” (actually they couldn’t). Or that Matt Lauer had been much tougher in questioning him than he had with Hillary (unt-uh).

In a normal election cycle, a candidate making an offhand racist remark about a sitting US senator would be a big news story.

In a normal election cycle, a candidate making an offhanded lie about the state of his personal finances would be a big news story.

To be totally honest, even in a normal election cycle a candidate exhibiting total confusion about the mechanics and merits of monetary policy probably wouldn’t be that big of a news story but it would at least get some attention.

***

It’s 56 days and a few hours until the election; one of the candidates is still stonewalling about his tax returns; both of them, who will be 69 (HRC) and 70 (Trump) on election day should be offering full health information, but at least what Hillary Clinton has offered so far is not a self-evident joke; and the race tightens up. Just noting for now an interview that in any other year for any other candidate would itself be the stuff of campaign-altering news. I am trying not to remain numb.

Through any campaign, candidates have ups and downs in their editorial-page treatment. The concentration of these four editorials in the past 24 hours seems unusual and is worth noting as a possible press recalibration.

1. Tampa Bay Tribune, “Feds should investigate Bondi-Trump connection.” This is of course about the apparent pay-to-play connection of Donald Trump’s donations to the Florida Attorney General’s campaign, and her then deciding against an investigation of Trump university. The editorial begins:

Federal prosecutors should investigate whether there is any connection between the decision by Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office not to pursue fraud allegations against Trump University and a $25,000 campaign contribution he gave her. Since Florida prosecutors will not touch this mess, the Justice Department is the only option. The appearance of something more than a coincidence is too serious and the unresolved questions are too numerous to accept blanket denials by Bondi and Trump without more digging and an independent review.

The Washington Post also has an editorial on this theme, “The Pam Bondi case shows that Trump is more hustler than businessman.” What is already known in this case—flow of money, favorable government treatment, exact cause-effect not yet proven—is so much starker than what is suspected in the many Clinton Foundation episodes that it is overdue for extra attention.

Imagine how history would judge today’s Americans if, looking back at this election, the record showed that voters empowered a dangerous man because of . . . a minor email scandal. There is no equivalence between Ms. Clinton’s wrongs and Mr. Trump’s manifest unfitness for office.

If the moderators of the coming debates do not figure out a better way to get the candidates to speak accurately about their records and policies — especially Mr. Trump, who seems to feel he can skate by unchallenged with his own version of reality while Mrs. Clinton is grilled and entangled in the fine points of domestic and foreign policy — then they will have done the country a grave disservice.

Whether or not one agrees with her positions, Mrs. Clinton, formerly secretary of state and once a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, showed a firm understanding of the complex issues facing the country. Mr. Trump reveled in his ignorance about global affairs and his belief that leading the world’s most powerful nation is no harder than running his business empire, which has included at least fourbankruptcies.

“Grave disservice.” “Reveled in his ignorance.” This is an editorial rather than a news item, but it marks a different tone from most campaign-year coverage of debates.

It’s refreshing, at least, to hear a national candidate [Johnson] acknowledge error and vow to do better.

Contrast that with Donald Trump, who in a televised national security forum Wednesday offered a staggering array of ignorant and mendacious assertions—and acknowledged no regrets about any of them.

***

One by one, sentiments like some of these have appeared in some outlets over the the weeks. Perhaps it’s a coincidence that they all appear at the same time. But perhaps it indicates how the unprecedented nature of the campaign has been provoking and requiring a different approach by the press. One way or another, it is worth noting with 59 days to go.

Now-retired Army general Michael Flynn, testifying as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency two years ago. He accompanied Donald Trump to the recent classified briefing. Flynn has kept quiet about what he heard there. Donald Trump has not.Gary Cameron / Reuters

Last night, at the “Commander-in-Chief” forum, Donald Trump characterized what he had heard from intelligence officials in a classified briefing, and said why he believed the briefers agreed with his political perspective and shared his disdain for the current administration.

I am not aware of any previous nominee ever having done anything of this sort.

(In the modern era, nominees have gotten classified briefings to keep them up to date on crucial issues. Some have deliberately delayed or declined the briefings, precisely so they wouldn’t need to constantly remember what information was classified and thus shouldn’t be mentioned in public, and what was safe to discuss.)

According to a story by NBC, two former heads of the CIA share the view that Trump has crossed yet another line. As Ken Dilanian and Robert Windrem report:

Former CIA and NSA director Mike Hayden, who opposes Trump, told NBC News that in almost four decades in intelligence “I have never seen anything like this before.” [JF note: Hayden, a retired four-star Air Force general, is no one’s idea of a political lefty, and is in the camp of national-security conservatives who oppose Trump.]

“A political candidate has used professional intelligence officers briefing him in a totally non-political setting as props to buttress an argument for his political campaign,” said Hayden. … “The ‘I can read body language’ line was quite remarkable. … I am confident Director Clapper sent senior professionals to this meeting and so I am equally confident that no such body language ever existed. It’s simply not what we do.”

Michael Morell, a former acting CIA director who was President George W. Bush's briefer and is now a Hillary Clinton supporter, said Trump's comments about his briefing were extraordinary.

“This is the first time that I can remember a candidate for president doing a readout from an intelligence briefing, and it’s the first time a candidate has politicized their intelligence briefing. Both of those are highly inappropriate and crossed a long standing red line respected by both parties,” he said.

Mike Lofgren, the longtime Senate staffer and defense expert turned writer (The Party Is Over, The Deep State) expands on an implication of Hayden’s and Morell’s comments. That is, Trump’s comments are not merely indiscreet; they are also almost certainly untrue. Lofgren writes:

Two points:

1. Employees of the intelligence community who give briefings to high-level officials do not, repeat, do not advocate for their pet policies. These people would not be presidential appointees but almost certainly career civil servants (or the foreign or intelligence equivalent of a civil servant) If they were asked, “what do we do about X?” they would demur on the basis of it not being their department. They know they are not there to advocate for policies. This applies doubly for personnel briefing presidential candidates because of the extreme political sensitivity. As for criticizing the policies of their bosses to a human megaphone like Donald Trump, it is inconceivable they are that stupid.

Of course the briefers didn’t actually advocate anything, as Trump first implied, so he fell back on what philosopher Karl Popper would have called a statement devoid of factual content, because it cannot be falsified: the briefers’ body language told him they disagreed with Obama’s policies. Sure, it did …

What he’s managed to do is put those briefers in an extremely embarrassing situation. In a Trump presidency, we could expect a lot more of that: generals and civil servants being nonchalantly thrown under the bus as if they were contractors or tradesmen being stiffed on the bill for their services at Mar a Lago.

2. So what if Putin has an 82 percent approval rating? We can argue about the validity of that figure, but let’s assume it’s true. It is completely irrelevant with respect to which policies are ultimately in the U.S. national interest. I dare say Xi Jin-ping is similarly popular in China, particularly with regard to his aggressive assertion of sovereignty over virtually all of the South China Sea. But that popularity has no bearing on what US policy towards the matter ought to be, particularly when an international tribunal has rejected China’s claim. The point Trump is making is a pretty ominous one when you deconstruct it: authoritarian populist leaders ought to get their way because of their alleged popularity.

***

Here we are, 60 days until the election, with the nominee discussing the classified information he’s heard, and the GOP establishment from Ryan and McConnell on down still saying: He’s fine!

Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, at a rally last month in Boston. A newspaper that almost always endorses Republicans has chosen him over Donald Trump.Brian Snyder / Reuters

A for-the-record note of developments in the past few days that, again, make this GOP nominee different from his predecessors:

1. Dallas. The Dallas Morning News is as reliably conservative and Republican an editorial-page operation as you will find anywhere in America. Never once in my entire lifetime, and long before that, has the paper ever endorsed a Democrat for president. The closest it came was in 1964, when it declined to pick a favorite between incumbent Lyndon Johnson, obviously a Texan himself, and Sen. Barry Goldwater, who was headed toward a crushing defeat.

Never once in my lifetime—until yesterday, when it came out with an editorial saying “We recommend Hillary Clinton for president.” That was the followup to the preceding editorial, “Donald Trump is no Republican.” If you don’t know Texas or the Morning News, it may be difficult to grasp what a huge step this is for the paper’s editors to take. But they took it, to their credit. I say “to their credit” because of the ongoing theme in this space, that people will look back to see who knew what about Donald Trump, at which stage of the campaign, and which stands they took in response.

How the DMN endorsement begins:

There is only one serious candidate on the presidential ballot in November. We recommend Hillary Clinton.

We don’t come to this decision easily. This newspaper has not recommended a Democrat for the nation’s highest office since before World War II—if you’re counting, that’s more than 75 years and nearly 20 elections. …

But unlike Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton has experience in actual governance, a record of service and a willingness to delve into real policy.

2. Richmond. The Richmond Times-Dispatch is nearly as reliable and Republican as the DMN. At least since Ronald Reagan’s first run in 1980 it has always endorsed a Republican for president.

Until this past weekend, when it officially endorsed the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson. Its editorial was not as reality-based as the DMN’s, in pretending that Johnson might win the election and ignoring the simple fact that either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be the next president. But as a marker of unusual developments it again deserves note.

Bonus item on Trump-era politics: This morning Gary Johnson made a grievous error when he asked “What’s Aleppo?” on a TV show. This will probably hurt him quite a bit. Errors like this have hurt previous candidates from Sarah Palin to Rick Perry, and now presumably Johnson as well. Consider, then, how Trump racks up similar misstatements practically every day and just keep going.

***

3. D.C. The third item was published in the New York Times but has the D.C. dateline because its author, James K. Glassman, has long lived and worked here. I’ve been friends with Glassman since our time together on the college newspaper decades ago. I’ve known that since at least the Ronald Reagan era he also has been a dependable Republican voter. He was a senior State Department official under George W. Bush and then was founding director of the George W. Bush Institute, at the Bush center within SMU in Dallas.

In his op-ed for the NYT, Glassman extended the logic and real-worldism of the Dallas Morning News editorial by saying that Republicans who find Trump unacceptable should recognize the importance of actually supporting Hillary Clinton:

I have voted for every Republican nominee for president since 1980, but I will not this time. Mr. Trump’s appalling temperament renders him unfit to be president, and his grotesque policy formulations mock the principles of liberty and respect for the individual that have been the foundation of the Republican Party since Abraham Lincoln. …

This is, whether we like it or not, an election between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton, period. And that means that if you want to stop Mr. Trump, you have no choice but to vote for Mrs. Clinton. There’s no sitting this one out.

Glassman mentions the many Republicans who have said “never Trump” without taking the next step of saying “therefore, Clinton”:

I have some sympathy with this position, but it is a cop-out. If you think Mr. Trump is so lacking in experience and judgment that he shouldn’t have his finger on the nuclear trigger, then you are saying he is not just a bad candidate; you are saying he is a threat to the nation. You have an obligation to defeat him, no matter what you think of Mrs. Clinton.

These developments are noted for the record, with 60 days and some hours until the election, with the polls tightening, and with ever-clearer evidence of the kind of man the GOP believes should become president. Congratulations on their intellectual honesty and civic courage to Republicans like Glassman and those at the DMN.

I’ve just now watched the hour-long “Commander-in-Chief Forum” on NBC, moderated by Matt Lauer. Three points that deserve note for the record:

1. Iraq. Donald Trump led off by claiming, falsely, that he opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and that this is an important sign of his good judgment:

TRUMP: Well, I think the main thing is I have great judgment. I have good judgment. I know what’s going on. I’ve called so many of the shots. And I happened to hear Hillary Clinton say that I was not against the war in Iraq. I was totally against the war in Iraq. From a — you can look at Esquire magazine from ’04. You can look at before that.

This claim is false. It is not true. It is a fantasy or a lie. Donald Trump keeps saying it. It keeps being false.

There is absolutely no public evidence, whatsoever, of Donald Trump having given any caution about invading Iraq before the war began. By contrast, there is evidence of his saying before the war that the invasion might be a good idea. For reference, a piece I did back in February. And this damning one from BuzzFeed about the same time, with audio of Trump talking with Howard Stern about the war. See this from Vox too. Even NBC’s own fact-checking department called Trump out on the lie just after the forum.

First depressing aspect: that Trump is still just proudly blasting out a lie.

Second, more depressing aspect: that NBC’s Matt Lauer did not even pretend to challenge him—not even by saying, “Wait a minute, why should a 2004 Esquire article matter, when that was a year after the war began?” Lauer, what were you thinking? If you knew this and didn’t say anything, why on Earth not? And if you didn’t know it, what were you doing in this role?

2. Russia. The exchange between Lauer and Trump about Vladimir Putin seemed even more jaw-dropping when seen on TV than it reads in print. Emphasis added:

LAUER: Let me ask you about some of the things you’ve said about Vladimir Putin. You said, I will tell you, in terms of leadership, he’s getting an A, our president is not doing so well. And when referring to a comment that Putin made about you, I think he called you a brilliant leader, you said it’s always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his country and beyond.

TRUMP: Well, he does have an 82 percent approval rating, according to the different pollsters, who, by the way, some of them are based right here. Look, look…

LAUER: He’s also a guy who annexed Crimea, invaded Ukraine, supports Assad in Syria, supports Iran, is trying to undermine our influence in key regions of the world, and according to our intelligence community, probably is the main suspect for the hacking of the DNC computers…

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Well, nobody knows that for a fact. But do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?

LAUER: But do you want to be complimented by that former KGB officer?

TRUMP: Well, I think when he calls me brilliant, I’ll take the compliment, OK? The fact is, look, it’s not going to get him anywhere. I’m a negotiator.

We’re going to take back our country. You look at what’s happening to our country, you look at the depleted military. You look at the fact that we’ve lost our jobs. We’re losing our jobs like we’re a bunch of babies. We’re going to take back our country, Matt. The fact that he calls me brilliant or whatever he calls me is going to have zero impact.

What is unprecedented here: a presidential nominee favorably comparing the autocratic leader of an increasingly aggressive and problematic power to the current commander in chief of the United States. Here’s why I’m acutely aware that this sort of thing just is not done:

Forty years ago right now, when I was working for candidate Jimmy Carter in his run against incumbent President Gerald Ford, I was grinding out one of the day’s 10 speeches, this one about the failures of the Nixon-Ford foreign policy. A newsmagazine photo had recently appeared of Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev sitting chummily together at an informal session at a summit meeting. By this time Nixon was the resigned-in-disgrace former president, whose legacy was dragging down his successor, Ford. Brezhnev was in his final years at the top of the USSR.

As the impetuous young speechwriter, I had thrown in some line about how neither one of them, Nixon or Brezhnev, was that big a fan of real democracy, nor attuned to the real hopes of their people [etc etc]. What I threw in was about one percent as disrespectful as what Trump said tonight about Obama and Putin. But it was immediately cut out, and I was immediately brushed back, by everyone who had a chance, from Carter himself to Jody Powell to anyone else within earshot. Carter said words to the effect of, “We don’t talk about a president that way.” We could say Nixon had betrayed the public, yes. Liken him to, or place him below, a Soviet or Russian leader, no.

Other amazing fact from seeing tonight’s session: It obviously matters to Trump that Putin calls him “brilliant”! This is exactly what one-time CIA head Mike Morell meant when saying that Putin, an experienced intelligence operative, had very skillfully played to Trump’s vanities, and made him (in Morell’s words) “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”

On the other hand, good followup by Lauer on this one.

***

3. Intelligence briefings. Remember the concern, when Donald Trump began getting classified briefings, that he would blurt out or misuse information he heard there?

How do his briefers feel after hearing this?

LAUER: Did you learn new things in that briefing?

TRUMP: First of all, I have great respect for the people that gave us the briefings. We — they were terrific people. They were experts on Iraq and Iran and different parts of — and Russia. But, yes, there was one thing that shocked me. And it just seems to me that what they said President Obama and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, who is another total disaster, did exactly the opposite.

LAUER: Did you learn anything in that briefing—again, not going into specifics—that makes you reconsider some of the things you say you can accomplish, like defeating ISIS quickly?

TRUMP: No, I didn’t learn anything from that standpoint. What I did learn is that our leadership, Barack Obama, did not follow what our experts and our truly — when they call it intelligence, it’s there for a reason — what our experts said to do….

And I was very, very surprised. In almost every instance. And I could tell you. I have pretty good with the body language. I could tell they were not happy. Our leaders did not follow what they were recommending.

Forget the body-language part. If this is true, it’s an outright betrayal of the people who briefed him and the terms of confidentiality he accepted. If it’s not true, it’s just another lie. In either case, it is yet again something we haven’t seen from past nominees.

***

That’s all I can stand to note about this session, with 61 days to go.

Donald Trump has taken heat, and will take more, for refusing to release his tax information.

It logically follows that whatever is in the tax returns would make him look worse than his stonewalling does.

No other conclusion is possible, unless you assume that neither Trump nor any of his advisors has any sense of what looks good and bad in a campaign. That’s a possibility, but it doesn’t ring true as the explanation in this case. And the “they’re under audit” excuse is bullshit, according to none other than the I.R.S.

This simple one-two logic has been underestimated in press discussion of the issue so far.

***

The premise of this series is to record, in real time, things about the Trump era that are outside previous norms. Here’s why the tax-return issue qualifies:

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, at the center of a "pay-to-play" controversy involving Donald Trump, speaking at the Republican National Convention in July.Mike Segar / Reuters

Over the weekend I mentioned signs of the press beginning to “normalize” Donald Trump. This was especially so in equating “doubts,” “questions,” “clouds,” and the “atmosphere of entitlement” that surrounded Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, with the actual offenses, lawsuits, bankruptcies, unpaid contractors, anti-trust settlements, bogus-visa issues, and other legal problems surrounding Donald Trump and his enterprises. Paul Waldman of the WaPo has an eye-opening catalog of them here.

This is a for-the-record placeholder note on the past few days’ developments in two related areas: what is known or alleged about Trump-enterprises, and how coverage increasingly equates them to “doubts” and “questions” about the Clintons.

1. Yesterday Paul Krugman did a NYT column called “Clinton Gets Gored” on this pattern of “normalizing” Donald Trump through press coverage. The column was notable because the unnamed/“sub-tweeted” object of much of his complaint was the news operation of the same paper in which it appeared.

The Times is the greatest and most admirable news operation in the United States, perhaps in the world. But in my view, and apparently Krugman’s as well, from the “Whitewater” era through today its political coverage has applied an unusual presumption of crookedness to the Clintons, out of proportion to their many real-world failings. You can read Krugman’s argument, and this fascinating online discussion between Norman Ornstein and Roger Cohen.

2. To illustrate possible disproportionality: David Farenthold of the Washington Post has been fearless and indefatigable in tracking the story of Trump’s failure to follow through on the vast majority of the charitable “commitments” he claims to have made, and his involvement in outright pay-to-play schemes involving his shady and lawsuit-plagued Trump University.

The most prominent recent example involves the Attorney General of Florida, Pam Bondi. As Farenthold describes it: Bondi was considering an investigation of Trump University; the Trump Foundation donated $25,000 to her campaign; she dropped the investigation. Bondi also spoke this summer at the GOP convention. You can argue about motivations on all sides, but there is no doubt that this sequence of events occurred—or that the IRS has fined Trump for a violation of tax laws in the case. The AP also had a very tough story on the Trump-Bondi case back in June. For the record, both Trump and Bondi deny that this was meant as a payoff or bribe.

This case differs from the “clouds” and “doubts” and “appearance of coziness” in most of the Clinton-scandal episodes, in that—whatever the motives—the transfer of money was followed by the desired result. In the Clinton cases, you’ll see phrases like “donors sought access” (rather than got access) or “while no hard evidence of favoritism exists...” That’s because the “play” part of pay-to-play generally did not occur.

The NYT, which has been all over the Clinton Foundation story, had noticeably failed to mention the Bondi case—until just now, when a story introduces it in the context of a criticism Bill Clinton has made of Trump. See for yourself, with my emphasis added:

Addressing an issue that has dogged the campaign, Mr. Clinton defended the Clinton Foundation. And he criticized Mr. Trump over his own foundation, referring to a Washington Post report that found that his charitable organization paid the Internal Revenue Service a $2,500 penalty this year after improperly giving a political contribution to a campaign group with ties to the attorney general of Florida, Pam Bondi.

Again: I admire, defend, respect, sometimes write for, and am a decades-long print subscriber of the NYT.But I don’t understand why its reporters can say on their own authority that a certain issue has “dogged the campaign” for one candidate, while couching hard legal evidence about the other as part of the charge-and-counter-charge “They all do it!” fray of the campaign. This paragraph is quite a remarkable distillation of what I was talking about in the previous post.

***

3. Over the weekend Trump’s running mate Mike Pence said he would release his tax returns very soon, and that Trump would release his when “the audit is completed.” Two facts about this posture of Trump’s have been known for a long time (as I laid out in #51, back in July).

First, that the IRS itself completely dismisses an audit as any barrier to releasing the returns. Fine with us for you to disclose them!the IRS has said. Second, if Trump stonewalls until the election, he will be the first nominee since Richard Nixon to do so—and Nixon’s own duplicity is much of the reason this has been an ironclad expectation since then.

A third possibility is one Matt Cooper of Newsweekraised last month: that the returns might not even be under audit. All we have to support that belief is Trump’s own word. But we also had his word that the NFL had sent him a letter complaining about scheduled dates for the debates, which the NFL immediately denied; and that the Koch brothers had sought a meeting to offer him support, which they also immediately denied. As Cooper points out, if there’s a real audit, there’d be a letter from the IRS saying so. That would not be a reason to stonewall on the returns, but it would be one step toward substantiating his excuse.

***

4. Bonus reading for the day: Josh Marshall on the Bondi case and differential scandal coverage; Daniel Drezner on the same theme Tom Levenson on the Clinton “scandals” and the heavy reliance on “while there is no evidence of special favors...”; David Roberts from early this summer, on the foreseeability of this kind of coverage; David Graham from earlier today on whether Trump was telling the truth earlier on when he bragged about donating to politicians to win favors, or now when he says there were no strings attached to his donation to Pam Bondi. Sixty-two days and a few hours until election day.

Offered without comment. This video is from several months ago, early in the campaign. But I hadn’t seen it before, and it is timeless. You will not regret investing 52 seconds in watching it.

The interviewer is David Brody, of Christian Broadcasting Network. I first learned about the video via Liam Donovan. Fitting the Time Capsule theme: I genuinely can’t imagine a previous nominee answering the question this way.

Back to things requiring some comment tomorrow, when it will be exactly nine weeks until the election and the “real” campaigning begins.

This might not be clear from the picture, but these things were full-sized—the one standing, and the other one, also antlered, resting in the bamboo. They turned and glared at me as if I should be getting off their lawn rather than vice versa. That will change when we get a new administration.

After a year of uncertainty and unhappiness, the president is reportedly feeling more comfortable—but has he really mastered the job?

It was a fun weekend for Donald Trump. Late on Friday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Andrew McCabe, the outgoing FBI deputy director whom Trump had long targeted, and the president spent the rest of the weekend taking victory laps: cheering McCabe’s departure, taking shots at his former boss and mentor James Comey, and renewing his barrage against Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump’s moods shift quickly, but over the last week or so, a different overarching feel has manifested itself, a meta-mood. Although he remains irritated by Mueller and any number of other things, Trump seems to be relishing the latest sound of chaos, “leaning into the maelstrom,” as McKay Coppins put it Friday. This is rooted, Maggie Haberman reports, in a growing confidence on the president’s part: “A dozen people close to Mr. Trump or the White House, including current and former aides and longtime friends, described him as newly emboldened to say what he really feels and to ignore the cautions of those around him.”

Invented centuries ago in France, the bidet has never taken off in the States. That might be changing.

“It’s been completely Americanized!” my host declares proudly. “The bidet is gone!” In my time as a travel editor, this scenario has become common when touring improvements to hotels and resorts around the world. My heart sinks when I hear it. To me, this doesn’t feel like progress, but prejudice.

Americans seem especially baffled by these basins. Even seasoned American travelers are unsure of their purpose: One globe-trotter asked me, “Why do the bathrooms in this hotel have both toilets and urinals?” And even if they understand the bidet’s function, Americans often fail to see its appeal. Attempts to popularize the bidet in the United States have failed before, but recent efforts continue—and perhaps they might even succeed in bringing this Old World device to new backsides.

How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory

One of the most extraordinary things about our current politics—really, one of the most extraordinary developments of recent political history—is the loyal adherence of religious conservatives to Donald Trump. The president won four-fifths of the votes of white evangelical Christians. This was a higher level of support than either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, an outspoken evangelical himself, ever received.

Trump’s background and beliefs could hardly be more incompatible with traditional Christian models of life and leadership. Trump’s past political stances (he once supported the right to partial-birth abortion), his character (he has bragged about sexually assaulting women), and even his language (he introduced the words pussy and shithole into presidential discourse) would more naturally lead religious conservatives toward exorcism than alliance. This is a man who has cruelly publicized his infidelities, made disturbing sexual comments about his elder daughter, and boasted about the size of his penis on the debate stage. His lawyer reportedly arranged a $130,000 payment to a porn star to dissuade her from disclosing an alleged affair. Yet religious conservatives who once blanched at PG-13 public standards now yawn at such NC-17 maneuvers. We are a long way from The Book of Virtues.

A new six-part Netflix documentary is a stunning dive into a utopian religious community in Oregon that descended into darkness.

To describe Wild Wild Country as jaw-dropping is to understate the number of times my mouth gaped while watching the series, a six-part Netflix documentary about a religious community in Oregon in the 1980s. It’s ostensibly the story of how a group led by the dynamic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh purchased 64,000 acres of land in central Oregon in a bid to build its own utopian city. But, as the series immediately reveals, the narrative becomes darker and stranger than you might ever imagine. It’s a tale that mines the weirdness of the counterculture in the ’70s and ’80s, the age-old conflict between rural Americans and free love–preaching cityfolk, and the emotional vacuum that compels people to interpret a bearded mystic as something akin to a god.

Among the more practical advice that can be offered to international travelers is wisdom of the bathroom. So let me say, as someone who recently returned from China, that you should be prepared to one, carry your own toilet paper and two, practice your squat.

I do not mean those goofy chairless sits you see at the gym. No, toned glutes will not save you here. I mean the deep squat, where you plop your butt down as far as it can go while staying aloft and balanced on the heels. This position—in contrast to deep squatting on your toes as most Americans naturally attempt instead—is so stable that people in China can hold it for minutes and perhaps even hours ...

As the Trump presidency approaches a troubling tipping point, it’s time to find the right term for what’s happening to democracy.

Here is something that, even on its own, is astonishing: The president of the United States demanded the firing of the former FBI deputy director, a career civil servant, after tormenting him both publicly and privately—and it worked.

The American public still doesn’t know in any detail what Andrew McCabe, who was dismissed late Friday night, is supposed to have done. But citizens can see exactly what Donald Trump did to McCabe. And the president’s actions are corroding the independence that a healthy constitutional democracy needs in its law enforcement and intelligence apparatus.

McCabe’s firing is part of a pattern. It follows the summary removal of the previous FBI director and comes amid Trump’s repeated threats to fire the attorney general, the deputy attorney, and the special counsel who is investigating him and his associates. McCabe’s ouster unfolded against a chaotic political backdrop that includes Trump’s repeated calls for investigations of his political opponents, demands of loyalty from senior law-enforcement officials, and declarations that the job of those officials is to protect him from investigation.

The first female speaker of the House has become the most effec­tive congressional leader of modern times—and, not coinciden­tally, the most vilified.

Last May, TheWashington Post’s James Hohmann noted “an uncovered dynamic” that helped explain the GOP’s failure to repeal Obamacare. Three current Democratic House members had opposed the Affordable Care Act when it first passed. Twelve Democratic House members represent districts that Donald Trump won. Yet none voted for repeal. The “uncovered dynamic,” Hohmann suggested, was Nancy Pelosi’s skill at keeping her party in line.

She’s been keeping it in line for more than a decade. In 2005, George W. Bush launched his second presidential term with an aggressive push to partially privatize Social Security. For nine months, Republicans demanded that Democrats admit the retirement system was in crisis and offer their own program to change it. Pelosi refused. Democratic members of Congress hosted more than 1,000 town-hall meetings to rally opposition to privatization. That fall, Republicans backed down, and Bush’s second term never recovered.

For years, the restaurateur played a jerk with a heart of gold. Now, he’s the latest celebrity chef to be accused of sexual harassment.

“There’s no way—no offense—but a girl shouldn’t be at the same level that I am.”

That was Mike Isabella, celebrity chef and successful restaurateur, making his debut on the show that would make him famous. Bravo’s Top Chef, to kick off its Las Vegas–set Season 6, had pitted its new group of contestants against each other in a mise-en-place relay race; Isabella, shucking clams, had looked over and realized to his great indignation that Jen Carroll, a sous chef at New York’s iconic Le Bernardin, was doing the work more quickly than he was.

Top Chef is a simmering stew of a show—one that blends the pragmatic testing of culinary artistry with reality-TV sugar and reality-TV spice—and Isabella quickly established himself as Season 6’s pseudo-villain: swaggering, macho, quick to anger, and extremely happy to insult his fellow contestants, including Carroll and, soon thereafter, Robin Leventhal (a self-taught chef and cancer survivor). Isabella was a villain, however, who was also, occasionally, self-effacing. A little bit bumbling. Aw, shucks, quite literally. He would later explain, of the “same level” comment:

Congressional Republicans and conservative pundits had the chance to signal to Trump that his attacks on law enforcement are unacceptable—but they sent the opposite message.

President Trump raged at his TV on Sunday morning. And yet on balance, he had a pretty good weekend. He got a measure of revenge upon the hated FBI, firing former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe two days before his pension vested. He successfully coerced his balky attorney general, Jeff Sessions, into speeding up the FBI’s processes to enable the firing before McCabe’s retirement date.

Beyond this vindictive fun for the president, he achieved something politically important. The Trump administration is offering a not very convincing story about the McCabe firing. It is insisting that the decision was taken internally by the Department of Justice, and that the president’s repeated and emphatic demands—public and private—had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

After a year of uncertainty and unhappiness, the president is reportedly feeling more comfortable—but has he really mastered the job?

It was a fun weekend for Donald Trump. Late on Friday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Andrew McCabe, the outgoing FBI deputy director whom Trump had long targeted, and the president spent the rest of the weekend taking victory laps: cheering McCabe’s departure, taking shots at his former boss and mentor James Comey, and renewing his barrage against Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump’s moods shift quickly, but over the last week or so, a different overarching feel has manifested itself, a meta-mood. Although he remains irritated by Mueller and any number of other things, Trump seems to be relishing the latest sound of chaos, “leaning into the maelstrom,” as McKay Coppins put it Friday. This is rooted, Maggie Haberman reports, in a growing confidence on the president’s part: “A dozen people close to Mr. Trump or the White House, including current and former aides and longtime friends, described him as newly emboldened to say what he really feels and to ignore the cautions of those around him.”

Invented centuries ago in France, the bidet has never taken off in the States. That might be changing.

“It’s been completely Americanized!” my host declares proudly. “The bidet is gone!” In my time as a travel editor, this scenario has become common when touring improvements to hotels and resorts around the world. My heart sinks when I hear it. To me, this doesn’t feel like progress, but prejudice.

Americans seem especially baffled by these basins. Even seasoned American travelers are unsure of their purpose: One globe-trotter asked me, “Why do the bathrooms in this hotel have both toilets and urinals?” And even if they understand the bidet’s function, Americans often fail to see its appeal. Attempts to popularize the bidet in the United States have failed before, but recent efforts continue—and perhaps they might even succeed in bringing this Old World device to new backsides.

How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory

One of the most extraordinary things about our current politics—really, one of the most extraordinary developments of recent political history—is the loyal adherence of religious conservatives to Donald Trump. The president won four-fifths of the votes of white evangelical Christians. This was a higher level of support than either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, an outspoken evangelical himself, ever received.

Trump’s background and beliefs could hardly be more incompatible with traditional Christian models of life and leadership. Trump’s past political stances (he once supported the right to partial-birth abortion), his character (he has bragged about sexually assaulting women), and even his language (he introduced the words pussy and shithole into presidential discourse) would more naturally lead religious conservatives toward exorcism than alliance. This is a man who has cruelly publicized his infidelities, made disturbing sexual comments about his elder daughter, and boasted about the size of his penis on the debate stage. His lawyer reportedly arranged a $130,000 payment to a porn star to dissuade her from disclosing an alleged affair. Yet religious conservatives who once blanched at PG-13 public standards now yawn at such NC-17 maneuvers. We are a long way from The Book of Virtues.

A new six-part Netflix documentary is a stunning dive into a utopian religious community in Oregon that descended into darkness.

To describe Wild Wild Country as jaw-dropping is to understate the number of times my mouth gaped while watching the series, a six-part Netflix documentary about a religious community in Oregon in the 1980s. It’s ostensibly the story of how a group led by the dynamic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh purchased 64,000 acres of land in central Oregon in a bid to build its own utopian city. But, as the series immediately reveals, the narrative becomes darker and stranger than you might ever imagine. It’s a tale that mines the weirdness of the counterculture in the ’70s and ’80s, the age-old conflict between rural Americans and free love–preaching cityfolk, and the emotional vacuum that compels people to interpret a bearded mystic as something akin to a god.

Among the more practical advice that can be offered to international travelers is wisdom of the bathroom. So let me say, as someone who recently returned from China, that you should be prepared to one, carry your own toilet paper and two, practice your squat.

I do not mean those goofy chairless sits you see at the gym. No, toned glutes will not save you here. I mean the deep squat, where you plop your butt down as far as it can go while staying aloft and balanced on the heels. This position—in contrast to deep squatting on your toes as most Americans naturally attempt instead—is so stable that people in China can hold it for minutes and perhaps even hours ...

As the Trump presidency approaches a troubling tipping point, it’s time to find the right term for what’s happening to democracy.

Here is something that, even on its own, is astonishing: The president of the United States demanded the firing of the former FBI deputy director, a career civil servant, after tormenting him both publicly and privately—and it worked.

The American public still doesn’t know in any detail what Andrew McCabe, who was dismissed late Friday night, is supposed to have done. But citizens can see exactly what Donald Trump did to McCabe. And the president’s actions are corroding the independence that a healthy constitutional democracy needs in its law enforcement and intelligence apparatus.

McCabe’s firing is part of a pattern. It follows the summary removal of the previous FBI director and comes amid Trump’s repeated threats to fire the attorney general, the deputy attorney, and the special counsel who is investigating him and his associates. McCabe’s ouster unfolded against a chaotic political backdrop that includes Trump’s repeated calls for investigations of his political opponents, demands of loyalty from senior law-enforcement officials, and declarations that the job of those officials is to protect him from investigation.

The first female speaker of the House has become the most effec­tive congressional leader of modern times—and, not coinciden­tally, the most vilified.

Last May, TheWashington Post’s James Hohmann noted “an uncovered dynamic” that helped explain the GOP’s failure to repeal Obamacare. Three current Democratic House members had opposed the Affordable Care Act when it first passed. Twelve Democratic House members represent districts that Donald Trump won. Yet none voted for repeal. The “uncovered dynamic,” Hohmann suggested, was Nancy Pelosi’s skill at keeping her party in line.

She’s been keeping it in line for more than a decade. In 2005, George W. Bush launched his second presidential term with an aggressive push to partially privatize Social Security. For nine months, Republicans demanded that Democrats admit the retirement system was in crisis and offer their own program to change it. Pelosi refused. Democratic members of Congress hosted more than 1,000 town-hall meetings to rally opposition to privatization. That fall, Republicans backed down, and Bush’s second term never recovered.

For years, the restaurateur played a jerk with a heart of gold. Now, he’s the latest celebrity chef to be accused of sexual harassment.

“There’s no way—no offense—but a girl shouldn’t be at the same level that I am.”

That was Mike Isabella, celebrity chef and successful restaurateur, making his debut on the show that would make him famous. Bravo’s Top Chef, to kick off its Las Vegas–set Season 6, had pitted its new group of contestants against each other in a mise-en-place relay race; Isabella, shucking clams, had looked over and realized to his great indignation that Jen Carroll, a sous chef at New York’s iconic Le Bernardin, was doing the work more quickly than he was.

Top Chef is a simmering stew of a show—one that blends the pragmatic testing of culinary artistry with reality-TV sugar and reality-TV spice—and Isabella quickly established himself as Season 6’s pseudo-villain: swaggering, macho, quick to anger, and extremely happy to insult his fellow contestants, including Carroll and, soon thereafter, Robin Leventhal (a self-taught chef and cancer survivor). Isabella was a villain, however, who was also, occasionally, self-effacing. A little bit bumbling. Aw, shucks, quite literally. He would later explain, of the “same level” comment:

Congressional Republicans and conservative pundits had the chance to signal to Trump that his attacks on law enforcement are unacceptable—but they sent the opposite message.

President Trump raged at his TV on Sunday morning. And yet on balance, he had a pretty good weekend. He got a measure of revenge upon the hated FBI, firing former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe two days before his pension vested. He successfully coerced his balky attorney general, Jeff Sessions, into speeding up the FBI’s processes to enable the firing before McCabe’s retirement date.

Beyond this vindictive fun for the president, he achieved something politically important. The Trump administration is offering a not very convincing story about the McCabe firing. It is insisting that the decision was taken internally by the Department of Justice, and that the president’s repeated and emphatic demands—public and private—had nothing whatsoever to do with it.